More than half of New Yorkers want 'sexting' Congressman Weiner to stay: Poll

New York City registered voters are divided on whether Democratic party Congressman Anthony Weiner should resign after admitting that he exchanged sexually suggestive messages with a half dozen women and lied about it, according to two polls.

A NY1-Marist Poll found that 51 percent of voters want Weiner to stay in office, while 30 percent want him to step down and 18 percent are unsure.

That comes in contrast to a poll conducted by SurveyUSA for WABC-TV that found 46 percent of New Yorkers calling for Weiner to quit, while 41 percent saying that he should stay in office, Politico reports.

In that poll, 13 percent said they were unsure of what he should do.

NY1-Marist surveyed 379 registered voters on June 6, and the poll has an error margin of plus or minus five percentage points.

WABC surveyed 500 adults in the city on June 6, and the poll has an error margin of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Earlier, addressing a news conference, Weiner had admitted to sending lewd photographs to many women through the social networking site Twitter.

Weiner said that he was "deeply ashamed" about the explicit exchanges that he had had with six women over the last three years, some of which occurred after he got married in 2010.

But the seven-term congressman said he would not resign, and expressed the hope that he could win back the trust of his constituents.

"This was me doing a dumb thing and doing it repeatedly and then lying about it. And that's all there is," Weiner said.